85. Passage 4: Read the passages given below and answer the questions No. 85-92
When the caste association turned to the state for furthering their purposes, their initial claims were aimed at raising caste stafus in terms of the values and structure of the caste order. But as liberal and democratic ideas penetrated to wider sections of the population, the aims of the caste association began to shift accordingly. Instead of demanding temple entry and prestigious caste names and histories in the census, the associations began to press for places in the new administrative and educational institutions, and for political representation. Independence and the realization of political democracy intensified these new concerns. Caste associations attempted to have their members nominated for elective office, working through existing parties or forming their own; to maximize caste representation and influence in state cabinets and lesser governing bodies; and to use ministerial, legislative, and administrative channels to press for action on caste objectives in the welfare, educational, and economic realms. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the caste association in the contemporary era, however, is its capacity to organize the politically illiterate mass electorate, thus making possible in some measure the realization of its aspirations, and educating large sections of it in the methods and values of its aspirations, and educating large sections of it in the methods and values of political democracy.
The caste association is no longer a nafural association in the sense in which caste was and is. It is beginning to take on features of the voluntary association. Membership in caste association is not purely ascriptive; birth in the caste is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for membership. One must also 'join' the (Rajput) Kshatriya Mahasabha or the (Jat) Kisan Sabha through some conscious act involving various degrees of identification ranging from attendance at caste association meetings or voting for candidates supported by caste association leaders, to paying membership dues. The caste association has generally both a potential and an actual membership; when it speaks, it often claims to speak for the potential represented in the full caste membership. While the purpose of caste are wide-ranging and diffuse, affecting every aspect of members' life paths, the caste association has come to specialize in politics. The traditional authority and functions of the sub caste are declining, but the caste association's concern with politics and its rewards serve to sustain caste loyalty and identification. This loyalty and sense of identification tend to retain the exclusive quality of the natural association; the caste association seems to have a more complete and intense coulmand of its members' commitments than is usually the case with voluntary associations.
Since modern means of transportation and communication have had the effect of broadening caste, binding together local sub-castes which had been relatively autonomous in to geographically extended associations, caste associations today usually parallel administrative and political units - states, districts, sub-districts, and towns - whose offices and powers of legislation or decision-making are the object of the caste associations' efforts.
(Source: Rudolph und Rudolph (201.4): Expluining lndian Democracy: A Fifty Year Petspectiue, 1956 -2006 The Renlm of tlw Pubtic Splere, Identity and Policy, New Delhi: OUP, pp. 6-7)
Q. Caste association is playing the role of (University of Hyderabad MA 2016)